US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth calls out "fat generals and admirals" in a speech to the newly restored Department of Defense. He stresses the need for "the highest male standard" when it comes to physical fitness.
00:00:00.500Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east.
00:00:12.200Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. So much to get to today.
00:00:16.620Secretary of War Pete Hegseth this morning calling out fat generals and admirals.
00:00:23.740Literally announcing new physical fitness standards for the military. I'm totally here for it.
00:00:30.000Plus, you will not believe, well you will, you will actually, what Ta-Nehisi Coates said about Charlie Kirk.
00:00:37.040It's so bad it actually got our pal Mark Halperin to drop a couple of F-bombs. You don't hear that every day.
00:00:43.300We begin today with Stu Bergeer, host of Blaze TV's Stu Does America.
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00:06:23.500Look, you can go, as I always say to staff who work here, if you don't want to ever be called in on an evening or on a weekend or over a holiday for breaking news, go work at KeyBank.
00:07:30.000The newly renamed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, spoke to U.S. military leaders from around the world to lay out his very retro vision for our armed forces.
00:08:40.320I made sure maybe I didn't order that second appetizer.
00:08:43.460You know, that's supposed to be something that we're kind of putting out there, I think, as a military to say not only are we in shape, which is obviously vitally important when it comes to a fighting force, but also that we're disciplined, that we're doing everything that we can to put forward an attitude of discipline and something that is going to be the desire of the world.
00:09:01.520I want people to look at us and, you know, you think about like the old Soviet military.
00:09:04.660You know, just all fat generals and their guts are hanging out.
00:09:08.500Like that's what I picture from every movie about that era.
00:09:15.240And I think bringing everybody in instead of doing it over a Zoom call is sort of like the difference between sending your kids to school and sending them to virtual COVID school, right?
00:09:25.940It's easy to hear that speech over a computer while you're in Afghanistan somewhere and you're like, all right, when is this going to be over?
00:09:31.820Having to make that trip across the world and to sit down there and have to listen to that in person.
00:10:09.640This administration has done a great deal from day one to remove the social justice, politically correct and toxic ideological garbage that had infected our department.
00:11:16.540Because they are – this is what they wanted.
00:11:18.540This is what they were cheering for while they were there.
00:11:20.720We had a guy who works here, one of our producers who's in the military, who literally stood up and cheered when he said this.
00:11:26.500Because we do have the best fighting force in the world, and they just want to be unleashed.
00:11:31.260They want to be unleashed to be able to do the things that they signed up to do, to work for the freedom of the American people, to extend the vision of our founders into today.
00:11:41.640And instead, we're worried about a 0.9-degree temperature rise over a century.
00:11:46.380We're worried about whether gender issues are going to be respected, whether pronouns, the correct pronouns, are going to be used.
00:12:44.660Can you remember a single speech or comment he made in four years?
00:12:50.040I'm sorry, but he was not inspirational.
00:12:51.700There's Pete out there speaking face-to-face with these generals and these admirals and living it himself.
00:12:57.660Every day we see one of those fitness videos posted by Pete where he's training with the troops, with the rank and file, the war fighters, as he calls them, showing them, I'm not above anything.
00:14:03.080And we want to fight as little as possible.
00:14:04.840You have to count on people like me to keep you out of wars because we don't want to go into war.
00:14:10.360How many videos did we have during Biden of trans service members putting on their drag queen eyelashes, makeup and dresses like from their military uniform and asking us to celebrate that?
00:14:26.060How many military recruiting videos did we have of like, my mom's a black lesbian and I'm a lesbian and I'm in the CIA or I'm now in some sort of, you know, intelligence service or military service?
00:14:37.200That's they were all about the DEI during Joe Biden.
00:14:41.540We didn't that which explains a lot about our withdrawal from Afghanistan and the way we were prioritizing our military.
00:15:03.540I mean, as you were painting that picture, it reminded me of of the videos that you had mentioned with Pete Hegseth out there.
00:15:09.540The other guy in a lot of those videos was RFK Jr., right?
00:15:11.980Our health secretary also in his 70s, able to do these ridiculous things.
00:15:15.860And we've gone to from a guy in jeans doing pull ups and push ups as the HHS secretary.
00:15:22.680Before that, it was a guy in a we had guys in dresses and and and people who were not even certain of what gender they were telling us health advice.
00:15:34.600And I really think you highlighted a great part of of the Trump dynamic here, which is he is pretty, pretty much averse to to going to war.
00:15:45.420Like he he is a guy who really wants to keep us out.
00:15:48.780He's been bragging about ending seven wars.
00:15:50.880He's made endless efforts in in both Israel and Russia to try to end those conflicts.
00:16:09.460But we're going to do what we can to avoid using it.
00:16:12.260And that combination, I think, you know, people, you know, there's this conflict on the right about whether, you know, Reagan's time is gone.
00:16:19.160But Reagan and Trump have similar messages there.
00:16:21.760They both either one of them, I think, wanted war, but they did want to have that peace through strength combination.
00:16:27.940And I think that's what Trump's trying to bring here.
00:16:30.500And I believe this is the right way to do it.
00:16:32.300Well, there was another surprising moment today when President Trump spoke in a rare, seldom seen moment.
00:22:30.220I want them to keep going down that road.
00:22:32.420I want them to keep thinking that they're going to convince people to vote for them by harassing them and telling them they can't make jokes.
00:24:21.260The same way that if the Democrats were making a parody video and they wanted to talk about some Trump supporter, they'd throw him in a red hat and they'd have him swigging a beer.
00:24:30.200And they'd, you know, like, it's the same thing.
00:24:31.820It's not, I wouldn't be offended by that.
00:25:00.060They will, you know, try to, this is what they're doing with the illegal immigrant health care thing right now.
00:25:04.300They're trying to buy racial minority voters.
00:25:07.900They're trying to bring those people back to them.
00:25:09.520They're trying to act as if the other side is racist.
00:25:12.360They will say anything they have to say at any given moment when it benefits them.
00:25:17.900That is the decision-making process for the left.
00:25:20.340When they, you know, it's, you know, when it's, it's all about individual rights when it comes to abortion because it's the one time they care about individual rights.
00:25:27.760They will say anything they need to say.
00:25:30.300And in this situation, they don't have much they can go for here.
00:25:33.540We've watched these shutdown politics over and over again.
00:25:35.880As you point out, almost all the time it doesn't happen.
00:25:38.140This time might be different just because the AOC left is there on Chuck Schumer's behind and may very well challenge him in the next election.
00:25:47.860And because he got his hand slapped for breaking down and agreeing to it at the last minute the last time.
00:25:52.320So Schumer's, he's now once bitten twice shy.
00:25:55.140Exactly. He's terrified of AOC and everybody on the far left.
00:25:59.240So he might very well go through with this, this time.
00:26:01.820But we've seen how the media handles this every other time it goes on.
00:26:05.040When a Republican is in the minority and there's a Democratic president, every single time we get the treatment that the party that's out of power is the one holding this up.
00:26:14.480We should just go forward with a clean CR.
00:26:16.760We should just keep spending at these, what I would say are completely ridiculous levels until eternity.
00:26:21.540And the only thing that will stop that are these evil Republicans trying to take these poor government workers and throw them out on their butts so they can't feed their families.
00:26:30.020Have you seen one federal worker profiled this week?
00:26:34.060There's usually two weeks of buildup of this.
00:26:36.180We get how these people won't be able to put their kids in daycare.
00:26:39.280They won't be able to afford their rent.
00:26:57.880I hope this stuff fails on the American people, but you never know.
00:27:00.980Meanwhile, this, speaking of Barack Obama, this is also his fault.
00:27:04.940His Obamacare law, which no one wanted.
00:27:08.820He shoved it down our throats without majority support.
00:27:11.540Elections have consequences is too expensive.
00:27:15.420It jacked up people's premiums and their rates in large pockets of the electorate.
00:27:21.220And in order to maintain some popularity for Democrats, they subsidized some folks, not everybody, because I hear from them in my email all the time about how their health care costs went up considerably after Obamacare.
00:27:34.240But they subsidized some portion of those bills for people so that they wouldn't feel the full impact of Obamacare for the first 10 plus years.
00:27:42.880And now they just keep kicking that can down the road and down the road.
00:27:45.900And those subsidies are about to go away because they can't stay in place forever.
00:31:06.600I mean, considering, I don't know if 2000 is technically the 21st century, if it's the last year of the 20th century, I can never remember that.
00:31:12.300But, I mean, everybody remembers how close that was.
00:31:15.320People forget how close the 2004 election was.
00:31:17.820It was just one state, Ohio, that was really the difference there.
00:31:22.420The 2016 election, Democrats won the popular vote, as you mentioned.
00:31:26.5802020 is another one that was closer than 2024.
00:31:29.840The only – really, if you look at the only elections that were more of a, quote-unquote, blowout than 2024 were the two Obama elections.
00:31:39.320And, you know, it's – I sometimes get nervous about praising it that way because we were really close to having Kamala Harris as a president.
00:31:48.660I mean, they needed to – you know, she needed to win three blue wall states.
00:31:51.760It's the largest margin of those three states was only 1.9 percent.
00:31:56.220So we have to make sure that we're – we take that seriously because if we stop working hard, if, you know, the people like the people at TPUSA that do all this hard work, without that hard work, that might have been a loss in that election, as crazy as it sounds.
00:32:09.900But it was definitely not the closest.
00:32:11.780I don't know why she keeps repeating this.
00:32:13.340This is one of many, many lies throughout the book.
00:32:16.340In the book, she claims that she came up with no taxes on tips.
00:32:31.480She just Googled it and came up with the global number, which was incorrect.
00:32:35.120And not to mention the overwhelming majority, over 80 percent, I believe, of the transgender people who have been murdered are murdered because they're sex workers.
00:32:44.540A lot of times these – and Chad Felix Green has gone through each individual case and talked about this.
00:32:48.640But we're talking about people who are showing up for a sexual encounter, portraying themselves as a woman, and then in the middle of the sexual encounter, the person who's paying them for sex finds out it's a male.
00:33:00.480Well, that's not the way that we normally think of transgendered violence because of hatred.
00:33:10.380But a totally different situation than it's being portrayed.
00:33:13.420There's a lot of this stuff in her book.
00:33:15.320She's, of course, delusional throughout it.
00:33:18.100But she also just seems to not even be checking basic facts.
00:33:21.780Well, I mean, at least she spat it out at that Howard event in a way that I could understand what she was saying so we can put the lie to it.
00:34:34.900I mean, how many of those did she have when she was vice president?
00:34:37.240We did a whole series called Veep Thoughts, in which, if you remember the old Saturday Night Live sketch where they would do these deep thoughts.
00:34:45.240She'd just kind of get out into this weird, she'd get out almost like on a plank, and she'd just keep talking and just think that she'd eventually be able to make it to the other side, to the next boat.
00:36:42.020Well, a lot of people are saying she's running.
00:36:43.820A lot of people like smart political people online are saying all that all they're hearing here is telling them she's running for president again.
00:36:52.820I just can't believe she thinks this is a good idea, though.
00:36:57.300So her book title sort of hints to it like the book is filled with excuses as to the only reason she lost the election is because she only has one hundred and seven days to come to come to have everything come together.
00:37:12.760I remember she actually got out to a lead about 30 days in.
00:37:16.180She if I think the shorter period of time would have worked much, much better for her.
00:37:20.200I was there when she picked Tim Walls as her vice presidential candidate in the most inexplicable decision in human history that was part of this this disaster.
00:37:31.720And I just don't think that's where people are.
00:37:33.740I mean, her her her answer on the Tim Walls thing was to say, well, I would have rather had Pete Buttigieg, but he was gay, which is strange.
00:37:43.560Which it puts her as the only person I've ever heard in my entire life, Megan, to admit they didn't hire someone because they're gay.
00:37:51.380I mean, I know that's probably happened as sadly, but it's like she actually the one person who's come out and said, yeah, that was technically illegal.
00:38:44.060And they didn't have any desire to bring her back.
00:38:47.240Kamala is sort of in that category, maybe not as extreme as is as Hillary.
00:38:51.500I think there are some people on the left who really think that maybe if she had a full time for a campaign, it would have worked out better.
00:38:57.420But we saw her try to run for her own campaign.
00:39:39.500A time such as this demands that we win the missionaries and, of course, check the balances on the unchecked incompetence on the English president.
00:39:56.280At a time such as this, it demands one thing for sure.
00:41:42.080I did think one interesting revelation in her book was on the day that Joe Biden told her he wasn't going to keep running and he was passing the baton to her.
00:41:49.320She started phone calling all these top Democrats to get their endorsement and their support so that there wasn't any sort of a fracture within the party and a mini primary push.
00:41:59.000And the one person who didn't pick up her call was Gavin Newsom, who just texted back hiking and then didn't ever call her back.
00:42:26.220Like, you know, the one thing she's very, very good at and the entire reason outside of sleeping with Willie Brown, which led to her rise into the American political world, is she was really good at those backroom moments.
00:42:39.460She's really good at harassing people to support her.
00:42:43.200The backroom moments with Willie Brown, a little bit different.
00:44:01.380Like she really feels she came up with this line after the fact like that.
00:44:06.420Maybe that's going to make her run again, you know, because she finally came up with the zinger, the Kamala Harris zinger she thought would have put her over the top.
00:44:13.780OK, speaking of they them, I want to spend a minute on what's happening between J.K.
00:44:38.080She came up with this book idea like in cafes while she was sitting there trying to think of a way to support herself and started writing this book that wound up becoming just a behemoth in international society.
00:44:49.920And the kids who got cast as Hermione Granger in the case of Emma Watson, as Harry Potter in the case of Daniel Radcliffe and as the other the other one, the least known of the trio, became international superstars.
00:45:06.420They got rich beyond their wildest dreams.
00:45:08.900They became overnight stars, sensations.
00:45:11.840Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe, at least, are still acting in many projects as a result of all of this.
00:45:18.800And really, all they should ever say to J.K. Rowling is, thank you.
00:45:33.360And within the past five years, I think it was five years ago, she has started, and so is Daniel Radcliffe, turning publicly and attacking, turning on and attacking J.K. Rowling.
00:47:24.260J.K. Rowling says it was after that speech.
00:47:26.120Yes, I agree with your scrunched up face that the backlash to J.K. exploded.
00:47:32.500And then Emma Watson gives this interview to Jay Shetty on his podcast like this week or last week, a couple of days ago, and says the following.
00:47:42.120Recently, there's been so many conversations and comments directly from J.K. Rowling, whether it's her saying she'd never forgive you for your views or the fact that when she was asked what ruins the movies for her, she named yourself and some of your co-stars.
00:48:05.420I really don't believe that by having had that experience and holding the love and support and views that I have mean that I can't and don't treasure Jo.
00:48:26.340There's just no world in which I could ever cancel her out.
00:52:25.220I'm not owed eternal agreement from any actor who once played a character I created.
00:52:30.420Emma Watson and her co-stars have every right to embrace gender identity ideology.
00:52:35.900However, Emma and Dan, in particular, have both made it clear over the last few years that they think our former professional association gives them a particular right,
00:52:44.980nay, obligation, to critique me and my views in public.
00:52:48.560Years after they finished acting in Potter, they continue to assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created.
00:52:57.700When you've known people since they were 10 years old, it's hard to shake a certain protectiveness.
00:53:02.960For the past few years, I have repeatedly declined invitations from journalists to comment on Emma specifically.
00:53:09.180Ironically, I told producers I didn't want her to be hounded as the result of anything I said.
00:53:17.300She speaks of that clip that we just watched.
00:53:20.960The television presenter in the attached clip highlights Emma's all-witches speech, and in truth, that was a turning point for me.
00:53:27.840But it had a postscript that hurt far more than the speech itself.
00:53:32.980This is the one in which Emma attacked J.K. in 2022.
00:53:36.980Emma asked someone to pass on a handwritten note from her to me, which contained the single sentence,
00:53:42.180I'm so sorry for what you're going through.
00:53:45.880This was back when the death, rape, and torture threats against me were at their peak, and I was constantly worried for my family's safety.
00:53:55.300Emma had just publicly poured more petrol on the flames, yet thought a one-line expression of concern from her would reassure me of her fundamental sympathy and kindness.
00:54:06.340Like other people who have never experienced adult life, uncushioned by wealth and fame, Emma has so little experience of real life, she's ignorant of how ignorant she is.
00:54:58.280I lived in poverty while writing the book that made Emma famous.
00:55:02.920I therefore understand from my own life experience what the trashing of women's rights in which Emma has so enthusiastically participated means to women and girls without her privileges.
00:55:15.020The greatest irony here is that had Emma not decided in her most recent interview to declare that she loves and treasures me, a change of tack I suspect she's adopted because she's noticed full-throated condemnation of me is no longer quite as fashionable as it was, I might never have been this honest.
00:55:35.320Adults can't expect to cozy up to an activist movement that regularly calls for a friend's assassination, then assert their right to the former friend's love.
00:55:47.160Emma is rightly free to disagree with me and indeed to discuss her feelings about me in public, but I have the same right, and I've finally decided to exercise it.
00:55:57.660But, I mean, Mike, Mike, drop Stubergear.
00:56:03.100She could not have said this more perfectly, better, more powerfully, or in a more damaging way for Emma Watson.
00:56:56.420Like, someone who you helped, you know, make an international superstar who, you know, was the, who gave birth to your creation, right?
00:57:04.780And bringing it into film, and you have to sit there and watch her criticize you over and over again, both, you know, directly and tangentially over a long period of time.
00:57:15.720And then for the, when the world sort of turns around to have this moment of, like, wow, I really love her, and I've always loved her, and I've always embraced her.
00:57:24.200That's got to be hard to deal with, and it feels like it really hurt her at her core.
00:57:28.680Understandably, I will say, the positive way maybe to look at this is that change is real, right?
00:57:36.840You know, if she's sensing that, if Emma Watson, in her circles, is really sensing a change like that, maybe we've made more progress than we even understand.
00:57:47.580And that is a really positive way to look at this.
00:57:51.260But that doesn't, you know, heal a wound that seems really deep for J.K. Rowling.
00:57:55.860My favorite line, I wasn't a multimillionaire at 14.
00:58:01.480I lived in poverty while writing the book that made Emma famous.
00:58:45.840And, you know, those those were the ones that burned as J.K. Rowling was dealing with death threats and having to amp up her security to protect her family.
00:58:55.940Those are the ones she was thinking about because we wouldn't even know Emma Watson's name if it hadn't been for J.K. Rowling.
00:59:08.280And, you know, one of the one of the parts of it that hit me when as you were reading it was when she stops herself and says, nay, obligation, right?
00:59:17.400As an obligation for her to come out and talk negatively about J.K. Rowling.
00:59:22.420That is how the society worked a couple of years ago.
00:59:26.440Like the left and honestly, tons of people in the middle, some even on the right, felt the obligation to post the black box on Instagram, felt the obligation.
00:59:51.240I don't believe any of these people believe the things they say on this topic.
00:59:55.340I don't think that they're maybe there's a couple, but I think the overwhelming majority of them see it as some sort of box they need to check to be on the good side of the world.
01:00:07.140But none of them in private moments believe it at all.
01:00:11.260None of them believe you can magically change your gender with a series of words.
01:00:16.200None of them could possibly believe that.
01:00:18.360These are stories you tell your children about magic and princesses and princes.
01:00:22.780I mean, we're talking about a person who wrote a book about a wizard.
01:00:35.100And the fact that we went through a period that is going to be looked upon in the past as one of the strangest periods in American history,
01:00:41.700where all of a sudden we were all supposed to change our minds and wake up to this new truth when we all knew it was false.
01:02:20.780And she has been going in front of the Davis Unified School Board every month for the last three years to raise her concerns surrounding their locker room policies,
01:02:30.520which let any student go to the locker room that they identify, of the gender they, quote, identify with.
01:02:36.500Which means boys can go into the girls' rooms and sit and watch them undress with impunity.
01:04:14.740Here she is speaking to the local news, CBS Sacramento, the next day.
01:04:20.340I just thought I would show the school board what does it feel like to change into your PE clothing.
01:04:25.700And I had a bathing suit on, so everything was covered as far as my body.
01:04:30.420You know, if the adults don't feel comfortable watching someone, and I'm a 50-year-old woman, change into an outfit, how can they expect the girls to feel comfortable doing that?
01:04:41.460So I just thought I made a really good point.
01:04:44.680Do you consider what you did last night disruptive?
01:04:47.900You know, I don't think it was disruptive.
01:04:49.960What was disruptive was them interrupting my three minutes of free speech.
01:04:55.180That didn't stop the orderly flow of the meeting.
01:04:57.860I didn't prevent the next person from giving their three minutes of comment.
01:05:06.080So far, I don't think the board is budging because they're ideologues who are going to hold on to this myth that it's somehow bigoted to say little girls have to undress in front of boys and that it's perfectly fine.
01:05:17.740But Beth can't go down to a bathing suit in front of these other grown adults.
01:05:26.440And I have to say, too, if you happen to be listening on SiriusXM, you have to know this one piece of color, which is the person who's on the board in the center is wearing an N95 mask because, of course, he is.
01:05:44.000And honestly, it makes a great point because she she didn't even get to the point where a young girl might be changing in the presence of other young boys.
01:05:54.240She got to the point where she's in a bathing suit, which is what you see on a beach.
01:05:57.820And even that they were so uncomfortable with, they couldn't even hear the words coming out of her mouth.
01:06:02.320If it's inappropriate in that environment, quite obviously it's inappropriate around 12 year old boys.
01:06:09.380Quite obviously it's inappropriate with 12 year old girls having to watch, have leering boys look at them in that way.
01:06:59.800And they were so uncomfortable seeing her in that state of undress.
01:07:03.620What's actually happening is you have young prepubescent girls or pubescent girls in their locker room and you have teenage boys coming in and taking it all off.
01:07:17.020If we want to talk about what's actually happening.
01:07:19.700It's girls at the height of the years in which you get embarrassed easily, especially about physical appearance, never mind nudity of your own, it trying to change into their bathing suits to go swimming in school like I used to do.
01:07:34.540And they've got intact males coming into their locker rooms and taking it all off.
01:07:42.200And because especially as you get a little older, let's say the teenage years and the college years, this is largely driven, this fetish by these men, by autogynephilia, which is where you get sexually aroused by dressing like a woman or being near other women, pretending you're one of them.
01:07:59.760You can add an erection to this picture for these poor girls.
01:08:03.740Deal with that, you disgusting school board perverts, your perverts.
01:08:09.000Seriously, like there's something wrong with them that they want to encourage that.
01:08:13.240But they can't take Beth Bourne stripping down to a modest two piece in the middle of their school board meeting.
01:08:52.580And, you know, it's hard to believe that it still exists.
01:08:54.820You know, I I said that when we were talking about Kamala Harris, that while it wasn't the closest election, it was too close for comfort.
01:09:01.060And I do feel that occasionally when we talk about these topics, it feels like we have made progress.
01:09:05.880I mentioned that maybe we've made more than we thought, but it's certainly not all the progress that we we've made.
01:09:11.320This is still around is still alive in a lot of communities.
01:09:14.240There are still a lot of places where, you know, a mom just trying to keep her daughter out of a locker room with a bunch of, you know, 12 year old boys.
01:09:24.520That's still the weird position in a bunch of places inside the United States.
01:09:29.720And we have to defeat that ideology because that, you know, we're putting kids at risk.
01:09:42.920But I was thinking as I watched Beth, the only thing that would be more effective than this would be if it were a man standing there who took it all off.
01:09:49.900Because that's actually what our daughters are having to deal with.
01:09:52.300I mean, it would be you'd get arrested for sure, but something for you to chew on before the next school board meeting in your town.
01:10:00.980I'm going to say no, please at least keep something on in this scenario.
01:10:05.960I hope it's not one of those European bikinis you're talking about.
01:10:08.920That's that's what would really bring it home, taking it all off.
01:10:17.360You would get arrested, but you would still be a hero.
01:10:20.640OK, I want to finish with this tomorrow.
01:10:23.380I'm going to take a deep dive into this coordinated series of attacks onto Charlie Kirk's legacy because it's really irritating me.
01:10:31.680And while I don't feel like I need to be the standard bearer of who Charlie was, his team is doing a great job of this.
01:10:37.660I've been right in the middle of all these fights.
01:10:39.840And Charlie came on my show many times after some of these controversial comments and we would talk about them.
01:10:44.760So I do have the receipts and I have had it up to here with these race hustlers like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Nicole Hannah-Jones out there posthumously trying to redefine who Charlie Kirk was.
01:11:12.040So I'm going to do just one soundbite with you today and then I'll get into it in more detail tomorrow.
01:11:19.480But Ta-Nehisi Coates went on with Ezra Klein of The New York Times and he had an issue with Ezra who had written a very nice piece after Charlie died complimenting and crediting Charlie for being willing to debate and to talk to the other side.
01:11:39.120So here it started, I'm going to play a couple soundbites actually, it started with Ta-Nehisi Coates trying to shame Ezra Klein for having done that in SOT 10.
01:11:47.460One thing I wrote about in that piece that I do worry about is I worry we are already in a cycle of political violence, of mimetic violence.
01:11:56.520I think about Pelosi, I think about Shapiro, I think about the near assassination on Trump.
01:12:00.640I think about when after that happened, I thought about me, I thought about you, I thought about all kinds of people I know, right?
01:12:05.320So I do think there's just something about when violence takes hold that you like that.
01:12:11.860There's something about it that it begins to breach all lines.
01:14:09.760I mean, you kind of wish it was more from some of these people, but I thought it was important that it was noted from someone on the left that this guy tried to do politics the right way.
01:14:17.340And I think the left has a real struggle on their hands because, you know, you have someone like Ezra Klein who's talked about this, you know, this abundance idea on the left, a way to kind of reform the left into a vision that maybe the middle of the country won't absolutely hate.
01:14:33.620And when I look at that politically, I'm like, gosh, you know, there's something to that potentially.
01:14:37.200Like, I'd be worried about that as a conservative who wants, you know, conservative ideas to win.
01:14:41.920It's much more threatening than politically than what we see on the left from someone like Coates, like someone from like Ibram Kendi.
01:14:49.160But what we see on the left over and over and over again is the incentives are all there for you to go farther and farther to vilify Charlie Kirk, to celebrate him, his death even.
01:14:59.100And that is, I think, I don't think there's a chance that the quote unquote sane left can win that battle over on that side.
01:15:07.200And that's a scary thing for our country.
01:15:09.260I mean, I think it's probably easier to defeat in elections, but it's a scarier thing for our country.
01:15:13.640And the more hopeless that side of the world becomes, we see it.
01:15:22.860We've seen it in cases like Minneapolis burning down cities through the George Floyd era.
01:15:30.840We've seen a lot of political violence.
01:15:33.020Even these left wing databases are starting to admit that now left wing political violence is more prominent than right wing.
01:15:39.740And even the ones that are admitting that now, Stu, are removing from their calculations, which are acknowledging it's left wing violence these days.
01:15:46.680They're removing from their calculations the BLM violence, the protests that we saw against Tesla trying to burn down Tesla dealerships.
01:15:54.560So many of the left wing causes actually get eliminated.
01:15:57.120And then things like the murder of Melissa Hortman, House Speaker in Minnesota, get blamed on the right wing, even though that guy was saying he did it under imaginary orders from Tim Walz for whom he worked at one point.
01:16:08.640Okay, here he doubles down, and here's why he really wanted Ezra Klein to just remain silent.
01:16:19.400I don't take any joy in saying this, but we sometimes soothe ourselves by pointing out that love, acceptance, warmth, that these are powerful forces.
01:17:12.360Maybe silence was a better option for you as his family is still grieving him and he's barely in the ground.
01:17:17.740Maybe now would be a time for you to shut the fuck up and stop talking about somebody you didn't know at all in hateful terms and driving up the hate meter on right wing thinking, which is what Charlie was guilty of.
01:17:30.340As many of us are still making public appearances and trying to live.
01:17:34.000OK, maybe that's something you could think about in the future.
01:17:37.960I can't say it better than Mark Halpern said it when he reacted on After Party with Emily Jashinsky.
01:17:59.180And there's so much evidence on the public record.
01:18:01.320You didn't have to know him personally to know that he wasn't a disagree with him.
01:18:05.960He said Charlie said some things I didn't disagree with.
01:18:08.440He said some things I didn't particularly fancy, but he was not a hater.
01:18:13.320And and and he's got a widow and two young kids and so many friends who loved him.
01:18:19.540And this guy's on the National Town Square talking bullshit about someone he didn't know.
01:18:24.980This is what's wrong with the desire for people to make money and get a claim off of saying false negative things about people they don't know.
01:19:06.140The other path, I think, is Erica Kirk.
01:19:08.040You know, we all watched her up there in an incredible moment and a moment that was just like the biggest billboard for Christianity that I think I've seen in quite some time saying, like, this is who we are.
01:19:22.180You're told all the time that we're the haters.
01:19:24.160You're told all the time that we can't stand you because of the color of your skin or or whatever choices you're making.
01:19:30.180When in reality, we're the people that are going to say we forgive you when you murder our family members like I it's impossibly hard to hit the Erica Kirk standard, which I'm sure she would point out is short of the Jesus standard.
01:19:46.660But certainly that's the way I want to aim.
01:19:51.720I don't know that I can ever achieve it.
01:19:53.100But but I when I think about who they are and the hate that they bring to the table over and over and over and over again, I'm I'm reminded of the strength that she had in that moment.
01:20:02.820And man, I just I pray for the strength that I could actually come close to replicating it.
01:20:10.720Ezra Klein tried to lower the temperature, tried to get a dialogue going across the aisle like Charlie did.
01:20:19.140And Ta-Nehisi Coates swooped in and crapped all over it.
01:20:24.600And while he gave words to I abhor political violence, he was encouraging it by doing what he did.
01:20:32.300His actions, his actual thoughts on don't reach out across the aisle.
01:20:39.060Don't praise someone like Charlie Kirk only amps up the hate against Charlie and others who agree with Charlie who are still around.
01:20:47.660It was an absolutely disgusting, cynical decision on his part.
01:20:53.860And as Mark points out, he did it intentionally in the public square to change the dialogue around Charlie and around the thoughts that Charlie had that have become mainstream that he finds so abhorrent.
01:21:05.960So I don't believe him that he abhors political violence.
01:21:09.160I don't believe him one bit or he wouldn't have shamed Ezra Klein for doing one small but noble thing to try to stop it.
01:21:16.280Okay, I do have a lot more thoughts on this.
01:21:19.060I'm going to offer them in a more linear way tomorrow because I just refuse to let the character assassination of Charlie happen.
01:21:27.700They attack him when he's not here to attack them back, though if he were, he would absolutely eviscerate both of them, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Nicole Hannah-Jones, with ease.
01:21:37.260So I'll do my best to pick up the mantle tomorrow.
01:21:44.280Coming up next, Britt and Witt, Britt Mayer and Will Witt are here on what the hell is up with this bizarre Super Bowl guy, bad bunny, who hates Trump and half of America, who's now just been chosen to play the Super Bowl, etc.
01:35:31.540I just want to know if anyone's still falling for this.
01:35:35.760I mean, I'm sure there's, like, the subset, right?
01:35:37.300The minority, the typical actors who are going to fall for whatever is spoon-fed.
01:35:41.060But the average American who knows now that ICE has been going in and making America safer, cleaning our streets so that we don't have more of the situations that have horrified us over the last few weeks with all of these stories.
01:35:56.220We have illegal aliens who are here illegally bringing harm to American citizens.
01:36:03.440So, for smart thinkers, for the average American, I just wonder if this even passes the test anymore.
01:36:09.680Or if average Americans are seeing this and just seeing it for what it is.
01:37:00.920And I just love this pandering where they make the liberal woman just seem like such the upstanding person and the white ICE guy is just so evil and terrible.
01:37:11.120They always do this, where they make it so that they seem like they're so much smarter than us.
01:37:22.480Because you watch really anything on TV or in the movies nowadays, I don't watch TV or movies now, because they say the white guy like me is the bad guy every single time.
01:37:32.260And I'm tired of watching things where it says I'm the bad guy every single time.
01:37:49.560It's another reason why Charlie's murder has so affected young men, because they've been told over and over that they're demons, that they're responsible for all of society's ills.
01:38:01.080And here was a young white man standing up to the mob saying, you don't have to believe that stuff.
01:38:44.380She went on the really inaptly named Nicole Wallace's The Best People podcast and have had a revelation about her conversation with her therapist.
01:38:56.280When people say, I changed my mind, we have to say, welcome back to reality.
01:39:05.840Let's all be Americans together, right?
01:39:09.440Because what's happening is not only happening to Democrats, it's happening to everyone.
01:39:15.860And when the Medicaid cuts go in, old people are going to start to die, to die.
01:39:23.820What he's done yet hasn't even hit us yet.
01:39:27.900And if he's not stopped now, we have lost our country.
01:39:32.100And I don't know, Nicole, how it is that some people cannot see it.
01:39:40.060My therapist said, why are you so upset?
01:39:48.140Yeah, I have that conversation, too, because the gaslighting that I think you're alluding to, if you're a thoughtful, informed person, you do stop and say, well, maybe it is me.
01:40:24.140It's like the boyfriend you break up with, but then you keep talking about him and obsessing over him and you're going on podcasts to talk about him.
01:40:30.940It's like just either you're over him and you're in Ireland happily or just come back here.
01:40:35.520You know, like fight for what you want here.
01:40:37.640I think that it's rich that she left and she still can't leave Trump.